What Is UX Design In Marketing
What is UX?
UX (User Experience) design is the process of creating a product that’s both usable and desirable. While many definitions attempt to incorporate outcomes of UX design within the definition (e.g. ease of use, talking with customers, designing with empathy, etc.) what’s important to know UX is a process with no single track of success.
UX design is one of the rare positions that prioritizes having knowledge in an array of horizontal skills over significant depth in any particular vertical. One is expected to have experience in web design and development, user research, graphic and interaction design, product development, and potentially even some project management and marketing. The real art of this position lies in utilizing all this knowledge to create a cohesive workflow to build a product that’s functional and enjoyable. To top it off, this workflow often changes from project to project depending on the product requirements and the skill set of the team.
UX In Marketing
While this particular page is geared toward defining the role of a UX designer, it’s important to understand the realms of UX and marketing overlap in many of the same areas. An accurate definition of marketing—similar to UX—is another debated topic that seemingly has many answers. Despite the complexity, the best and most concise definition of marketing is the ability to capture a perception in the mind of an audience. This definition includes various areas of marketing including sales, advertising, public relations, and branding; all of these areas being able to change perception. More importantly, this definition also includes entities outside of business including politics, religion, activism, and ideology—all of which require marketing in some way.
Though the goal of a UX designer is to create a product that’s usable and desirable, the methods of how one achieves that result include talking to customers, understanding their needs, measuring a product’s effectiveness, and iterating for improvement—all tactics of marketing. Long story short, while not commonly associated with the role of marketing, the mindset of both departments share more in common than most realize.
Knowing this, it’s not easy to determine where a UX designer “fits” in a company or even what department they should be best located. UX designers work directly with graphic artists, business stakeholders, programmers, and project managers—all of whom will typically be placed in different locations within a large organization.
In the case of the corporate structure who’s teams are department-based rather than project-based, I believe it makes the most sense for them to be located within marketing where their research can be best utilized and shared. In the case of a project-based organization with dedicated teams, the department-based hierarchy no longer applies.